A Mess of One's Own

Writers love to see where other writers write. Come to think of it, non-writers also love to see where writers write.

I remember one memorable trip I took to Key West, Florida, where I visited Ernest Hemingway's home. Overrun with six-toed cats and wallpapered with photos of immense fish, it also had a palm-cosseted blue tile outdoor pool and an open, sunny writing room over a building adjacent to the main house. (photo above left)

I remember the near-reverent hush that came over our tour group as we passed through that room. I found myself wanting to touch his typewriter, give those keys a few good clacks of my own. I'm no Hemingway fan, but I couldn't help but feel awe as I stood in the space where he wrote Nobel-prize-winning novels. This is where it all happened, I thought. As if a writing place is somehow magical space.

So not my office.

I wrote my first novel in the basement. Granted, there's heat, and the floor is carpeted. But my "office" was a windowless area off the furnace room, and I allowed it to become a dumping ground for files and boxes of photos and ... shells from Florida and my old baby shoes and ... oh, the list goes on. The horror, the horror. I've actually included a picture of that computer desk in the slideshow I present to students when I do author visits. I wrote Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress here:

Things picked up a bit after Brett. I abandoned my hopelessly dark and messy cave and moved to a corner of the den, where there are windows and a delightful woodstove. I can get away from everyone here and work in relative quiet and if I cran my neck hard enough can check out the weather through the line of small, high windows behind me. I wrote Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best here:

To date these far-from-magical spaces have worked for me, but I'll confess: I want more. I want the Hemingwayesque Florida studio. I want the daybed for lounging when I feel the need to "create" from a horizontal position. I want the cozy writer's cottage surrounded by flowers, perhaps with a view (the ocean?)and most certainly with an amazing desk. Pottery Barn makes a nice one:


Ask anyone who knows me: I'm not a materialistic person. I rarely shop, I don't care about cars or jewelry or stuff of any sort. The only things I buy which I probably don't need to buy are books (I'm a sucker for a beautiful hardcover ...) But when it comes to a writing place, and I check out where writers work, I feel true longing.

When we first moved to Maine, my writing place was pretty amazing. It was an old stable which had been converted into an artist's studio and it gleamed with blond wood and white bookshelves. One entire wall was lined with long windows, and the only heat source was a woodstove. I would write on a makeshift desk that looked into the yard, and whenever I pulled my attention away from the page I could see the resident red squirrels run up and down the trees.

Unfortunately, that studio was part of a rental, and we eventually had to move. I took to writing in coffee shops after that, mostly because we had very young children and I needed to get out of the house for a couple of hours. The "white noise" of patrons chatting and the smell of really, really good coffee actually helped me carve out a focused, creative space in my head, and I got some good work done at Wild Oats and The Bohemian Coffeeshop in Brunswick.

Still, as I take my first tentative steps into a third novel, I'm wondering whether an upgrade is possible. One writing friend put a shed in her backyard and fixed it up into a very cozy writing "house." I think Annie Dillard writes in a shed. It's worked quite well for her ....

Of course, the good news is that while an extraordinary writing place is a wonderful thing, it's not a necessary thing. Quiet, paper, and a few square feet that you can walk away from and trust that what you've left there will remain undisturbed until your return, is really all that's needed. Ultimately, the magic is all in your head. In the imaginative mess of one's own we writers create.

Shall We Dance?

Forget the foxtrot. Forget the jitterbug, swing, the rhumba, mambo, shagging, pogo, slam, the electric slide or that cruise-ship-and-elementary-school-gym-class favorite: the macarena.

Today's teens grind. And if you thought Elvis and those too-hot-for-television hips were racy, you ain't seen nothin'.

At the public high school in the Maine town where I live, the Vice Principal has banned dances until further notice as a result of grinding. In other towns, administrators have taken a more creative approach. I read of one case where the students must sign pledges and agree to shun obscene dancing. This earns them a bracelet (something approximating the type you get when you're admitted to the hospital) which they must wear at the dance. If they violate their pledge (use your imagination) their bracelet is snipped and they are ejected. By some burly chaperone, no doubt.

Ah chaperones. The unsung heroes of the public school system. Made of tougher stuff than me. I cannot imagine eyeballing a gym's worth of writhing teenagers, flash assessing obscene behavior and pulling the culprits apart. I can understand why a Vice Principal may decide to not go down that road.

What I know about grinding I've heard from my own teens as well as gleaned from the panicked parental rumor mill in our town. Plus, when a mother of teens from Pittsburgh mentioned that grinding was a concern for her (why did I think it was only happening in Maine?)I decided to do a You Tube search for grinding.

The videos ran the gamut: from dance studio instructors demonstrating the six basic steps in Beyonce's All the Single Ladies music video, to freak dancing at clubs to blurry hand-held camera footage of eighth graders simulating sexual intercourse. The latter approached what I imagine an orgy might look like. Seriously. I had considered posting examples, but because I write novels for readers as young as sixth grade, and some visit this blog, I decided to pass.

I wear my author's cap for the purposes of this blog, so I will resist parental ranting about grinding. I'm trying to understand it in order to authentically portray the characters in my books, just as I had to get up to speed on text and instant messaging, Facebook, and playing phone pranks on a cell phone. I'm not judging; just trying to understand.

Still, my age and maternity encroach, and I find myself thinking of the movie Red Hot Ballroom. If you haven't seen it, run (don't walk) to your nearest video store and check it out. It's a documentary about an annual citywide ballroom dance competition that takes place among New York's elementary school students. Watch these little kids move and your faith in the future will be affirmed. Watch as they master difficult dances and show us how joy and beauty can emerge from form.

My advisor in college, the poet Robert Pack, was a big believer in form. He believed that the formalistic rigor in writing something as complicated as a sestina or a sonnet actually released creativity instead of inhibiting it. Adhering to form opened possibilities, he felt. It made you work a little harder, and wonderful things resulted.

Some of the hip hop moves I found on You Tube under the search "grinding" were pretty cool, complicated steps that would require a lot of practice and talent to perform. Other examples of "grinding" I've seen done much better by the dogs in my neighborhood. I guess it's up to the chaperones to sort it all out.

Speaking Boy

I’m trying something new with my next novel: narrating from a male point-of-view. A teenage male, no less.

For a woman-of-a-certain-age, like myself, (you fill in the number) this is a stretch. Not only because I have to adopt the parlance of the high school cafeteria, but I have to inhabit the mind of a 17-year old boy and try to respond to the world his way. Everyone advises me to just keep thinking sex, sex, sex, sex … and occasionally FOOD!

But that’s the stereotype, isn’t it? Thuggish preoccupation with overwhelming physical need. Best expressed in sentence fragments and obscenities.

Boys are so much more. I know my boy is, and I’m fascinated by the layers of teasing, random anecdote, sports talk, current events talk, and NO talk we have to mine before hitting the rich, emotional lode our young man carries within. It’s a process, and requires me to unhinge my own gateways into conversation and simply remain open; listening and waiting.

The linguist, Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand, posits that men and women speak so differently that their conversations are essentially cross-cultural communication. I totally buy that, and incorporating that premise into my day-to-day has added a level of humor and depth of understanding between my husband and myself that has helped our marriage survive. It’s helped me talk to my son. Expressing it artistically, however, is another challenge.

So in addition to eavesdropping on teenagers and consulting with my own teens, I’ve been looking for role models: authors who have “cracked” the authentic, contemporary male voice. Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tops my list, as does Libba Bray’s Going Bovine. It’s encouraging to me that Libba is a woman (You go, girl! You speak boy!) Right now I’m halfway through Garret Freymann-Weyr’s After the Moment, a novel in which she very consciously explores notions of masculinity and a male point-of-view.

My wonderful editor at Knopf, Nancy Hinkel, recommended Tim Tharp, both Knights of the Hill Country and The Spectacular Now, along with a historical novel by Victoria McKernan called Shackleton’s Stowaway and a book about chess competition called Perpetual Check, by Rich Wallace.

The stack of books on my night table teeters at this point … but any other role models you might suggest?

This blog is on vacation next week. Next post will be February 22nd.

Wanted: An Honest Critic

When I was 21 I attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and almost gave up fiction writing altogether.

My manuscript was critiqued by the novelist Stanley Elkin, an exceedingly grouchy, old white man whom I now suspect was in some significant pain; he had MS, was in a wheelchair and often called attention to the fact. He was prolific and successful and smart and ruthless. I was eager and inexperienced and unskilled and vulnerable. He told me my manuscript wasn’t a manuscript at all; he didn’t know what it was. The characters were undeveloped and unbelievable, the writing poor, the plot non-existent … there was more, but I’ve blocked it from my memory. I do know I cried, right there in front of him, and he looked genuinely surprised.

“This is going to help you,” he said, with a tone that hinted of helpfulness. Then, he lapsed back into attack mode.

I cried for most of the rest of that day. Another friend, also 21 and also assigned to Stanley, drank half a bottle of Scotch following his critique. Both of us vowed to never write again.

Twenty-seven years and three book deals later, I finally understand what Stanley was up to. If called upon to critique, you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind. Well … maybe not exactly cruel. But honest. If someone is trying to break into this business and make a career out of writing, you aren’t doing them any favors by avoiding the hard truth. One could waste years sending out seriously flawed manuscripts which “nice” people say are wonderful.

Friends don’t let friends write poorly. Put that on my bumper.

When I was in that isolated, full-of-self-doubt place called Drafting a First Novel, I shared the first 50 pages with a writer friend and a college acquaintance who has her own imprint at a major publishing house. My writer friend, who is an extremely nice person and has published many books, was … extremely nice. “You have talent!” he enthused. Imprint Woman delivered the goods. She treated me like a potential client: she told me exactly what was missing and why she wouldn’t be able to pitch it to a committee. This did not make me happy, but it set me on the right course. I rewrote, and a year later had an agent who also set the bar high and pushed me to rewrite. And cut. A third of the manuscript, if you can imagine. It was like surgery without a spinal block. But … she sold that baby. And now I have an amazing editor who helps me improve my writing.

Your favorite elementary school teacher, the person you sleep with, your best friend and your mom are not going to give you the straight poop. Not only is it unlikely that they have the editing/critiquing skills you need, but they don’t want to make you feel badly. Stanley Elkin had no such tender feelings toward me, so he didn’t hold back.

So if we don’t have agents and editors already, where do we go for genuine critique? Among my writer friends I’ve witnessed several good options. Some make the commitment to obtain MFAs at non-residential programs; others attend writers’ conferences in which they submit manuscripts for critique. Some form critique groups. One friend hit the jackpot and received excellent advice from a writer in our town who is not only highly skilled and successful, but also a kind, constructive teacher. Bingo.

My Scotch-drinking fellow sufferer went on to write for magazines and become an editor at Rolling Stone. Stanley Elkin published 10 novels, two volumes of novellas, two books of short stories and a collection of essays. Wikipedia says he obtained great critical acclaim throughout his career, but not much commercial success. He died in 1995. RIP.

The F Bomb

So I tried a little experiment the other day. I pulled out a popular, commercially successful YA novel which had been published by a reputable house and turned into a successful motion picture and counted the “fucks” on every page.

That got a little boring (there were a lot of them) so I decided to simply check to see if the F Word appeared on every page. That became tedious as well (few pages lacked a “fuck”), especially because I became distracted by all the “shits” and considered tabulating their occurrences, too.

This little experiment actually had a point. I’ve been wondering: if YA dialect is to be authentic, must it necessarily be obscene? And yes, I do mean dialect, not dialogue. Face it, grownups: they speak a version of English more easily translated in the Urban Dictionary than the Oxford English Dictionary. More than occasionally I hear a word emerge from a teenage mouth and I wonder: what the dickens did that mean? For example: rager. Until recently I didn’t know a rager was a big party, and I’m not alone in my ignorance. I was out hiking with moms-of-teenage-kids and I asked the group, “So, who knows what a rager is?” and nary a soul could answer. So, yes, teens speak in dialect.

But, back to the potty mouth. I ask you: really?

Are today’s teenagers swearing to such an extent that a realistic depiction of their conversation translates into an F Bomb or more per page? I consider this just as I complete a scene in my latest novel in which the F Bomb most certainly appears and feels appropriate. The characters’ language is consistent with their behavior and deportment and the choices they make later in the book. Then again … am I just being lazy? Do I hope to find an authentic voice by simply sprinkling the text with a few swears, plus the occasional “dude” and the ever-present “like”? (As in, “It was, like, you know, totally awesome, dude, like, you wouldn’t believe it!”)

My brother and his family recently returned from a trip in Ireland, and my little nephew, all of seven years old, commented, “All the kids are always saying …” He leaned in to whisper: “Fuck!” Yes indeedy the F Bomb is alive and well among Irish youth today … and if you don’t believe my nephew check out Roddy Doyle’s books. I was thumbing through The Barrytown Trilogy and saw more F’s per page than in the aforementioned YA-novel-turned-into-a-successful-motion-picture.

But here’s the deal: Doyle’s dialogue rings true. He knows his characters, this is how they speak to each other, and if it’s a struggle to understand it on the page, try reading it out loud. You hear real people, you get caught up the cadences of their language, and before you know it you are transported into their world.

Author (and newly minted Printz Award winner!) Libba Bray does this very well. Her teenage-boy narrator in Going Bovine, with all his variations on the word “suck” and the proliferation of “dude!” is pure American teen. I believe in this boy and I walk alongside him on his journey. Likewise, the obscenity-free Victorian-era patter of her teenage girls in A Great and Terrible Beauty. Their language, more than anything else, helped place me in a time and space quite different to my own.

I know dang well that a single F-Bomb might keep my book off certain library shelves. But I also know that in my quest for authentic voice, I may have to choose words and language which I personally may not use, but which my characters will use. I guess the challenge is to use the language carefully and not gratuitously. But I guess that can be said for every word on the page. Le mot juste, and all that.

Same as it Ever Was ....

So I’ve probably revealed a bit about myself by titling this post with a line from a “Talking Heads” song, but after mucking about in the on-line chatter over 15-year old Tess Chapin from New York City, the party music of my youth has taken up a steady beat in my brain.

In case you haven’t heard, which is hard to imagine: Tess Chapin is grounded. She attended a party where there were no adults, drank alcohol, and returned home one hour past her curfew. Her parents have grounded her for five weeks, and Tess has launched a campaign on Facebook to have her “groundation” lifted. The New York Times got hold of the story, blogged about it, and a firestorm of comment and debate (some civil; much not) has erupted between parents and teens everywhere.

Back when I was a producer at a “talk” radio station in Atlanta, Georgia many years ago, we called this a “water cooler” story. That meant stories people talked about at work when they bumped into each other at the water cooler/the coffee machine/the lunch counter. “Water cooler” stories may lead to tears or belly laughs or shouts and shrieks, depending on their content. They elicit very strong, often polarizing reactions. They always lead to retelling; they’re viral.

As the parent of two teenagers you can imagine which camp I fall into. As a writer combing through all the posts, I’ve been fascinated not only by the opinions expressed but also by the “voices.” The adult condescension/wisdom/warnings/threats/pleadings. The youthful rebellion/humor/naivete/obscenity/pleadings. Pleading to be heard. Pleading to be understood. Pleading don’t-screw-up-your-life. Pleading let-me-live-my-life.

Same as it ever was …

Coincidently, I was working this past week on a chapter in which a group of 17-year olds have gotten their hands on a case of beer and are drinking it at night, lying on blankets in the middle of a football field and gazing up at the stars. (It started as a case of Corona, but my 16-year old daughter reminded me that these particular middle-class kids would not be drinking imported Mexican beer. She suggested Budweiser but I went with Rolling Rock … and yes, those are the sorts of questions I wrestle with throughout a manuscript ….) I’ll confess that it’s been fun to step out of my parent skin and sprawl drunkenly beneath the stars with friends. It’s been fun to abandon my role as purveyor of sage advice and experience. It’s been interesting to crawl back into my teenage self and remember why I did the things I did.

I don’t recall, ever, when I was making reckless choices about drinking or driving or sex, that my behavior was based on any sort of a big “F- You!” to my parents. Actually, their advice and their rules and their example played no part in the decisions I made at the moment. I was too full of life and energy and “YES!” to consider consequences. I was too busy riding the incredible rush of being and feeling young.

If there was any great imperative guiding my choices it was the overwhelming need for contact and relevance in the world of my peers. I didn’t necessarily have to be popular: I just didn’t want to be left out. Now that I have a spouse and two children of my own, I’m apt to forget that as a teen I felt an existential, consuming loneliness that evaporated when I felt that my peers accepted me. It’s a dangerous combination: all that energy and all that loneliness. No wonder the good advice of involved parents often falls on deaf ears.

Still, if my kids are any example, I'd say despite the tuned out looks and the snarky responses to my always-excellent (!) advice, their hearts are open and they do hear us. Whether that influences their behavior at any given moment is another question, but I have noticed that when I shut up for a minute and listen ... really listen ... to them, they return the favor. It doesn't mean anyone is going to change his or her mind or yield any ground, but it's a start.

So, the Chapin parents must ground, and hold their ground. Tess must struggle mightily against any restrictions. And all must rail about the inability of the other to hear/understand/act accordingly. In the worst cases, something bad happens and relationships are irretrievably wrecked. In the best, love and good humor and good sense prevails and we muddle on, so that we parents live to see our children chiding their teens, and our children live to hear our words of wisdom emerge from their mouths.

In Praise of Verbs

I can name the author, book, chapter, page number and very sentence responsible for transforming me into an Ardent Believer in Verbs. We’re talking Saul-in-the-Blinding-Light-of-God epiphany here, and my writing has never been the same.

The book was The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. Chapter 32, “The Hairy Devil,” page 254.

Up to that point, ie. the preceding 253 pages, I had ridden the delightful waves of her buoyant, unpredictable prose without quite realizing its effect on me. I’d smile when I read her descriptions of a rainy wharf: “Rain sluiced over the upturned [boat] bottom, pattered on the stones. … A man leaning in a doorframe, hands draining into his pockets.” Or a scene inside the offices of the The Shipping News: “Car doors slammed outside, Billy Pretty’s voice seesawed. Nutbeam snapped up alertly.”

Proulx’s rain didn’t fall: it sluiced and pattered. Hands weren’t thrust into pockets: they drained. Voices didn’t get louder and softer: they seesawed.

Assertively and efficiently, the author employed verbs not only to tell me what her characters were doing, but also how things looked and how they sounded. She was also telling me a little about how her characters felt: a man whose hands are draining into his pockets is in a different state of mind from a man whose hands are balled into fists and jammed into his pockets.

Then, at page 254, one of the main characters (Tert Card) approached a deli platter, and my writing life changed:

“He plucked at the plastic wrap, seized a handful of ham, and shoved it into his mouth.”

I stopped. I reread. I counted: plucked, seized, shoved. In three verbs and one line, Proulx told me all about Tert Card’s state of mind and foreshadowed the brutish events to follow. No adjectives, no physical descriptions, no annoying adverbs. Just simple, unequivocal language.

Maybe if I had chanced on the sentence out of context I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the whole novel had been working on me for 253 pages, and finally, with that single sentence, something clicked.

Verbs rule. Verbs are the bomb. Verbs have got it goin’ on.

Granted, The Shipping News has some pretty rad adjectives, too, and more than 300 pages of take-your-breath-away sentences. One writer friend of mine asserts that the final line in this novel is one of the best final lines of all time … more on that later … but for a Writer Apprentice like me, who reads not only for joy but also to improve my craft, this book taught me an important lesson.

My words don’t approach the richness of Annie Proulx’s language, but I’ve got a few ideas for strengthening my verbs. First, I whip out a red pen, and hunt down every “to be” verb on a page. Any time is, was, are or were occurs, I ask myself “What’s the action here? Can I substitute a better verb which gives the reader more information and enhances the scene without piling on adjectives? Sometimes the answer is no: to be just simply must … be. Other times a wonderful verb will flex its muscles and step into the sentence. Amazingly, the sentence sings.

So, I’m a believer. Better yet: I believe. Drinking that Verb Kool Aid and working toward better and better writing.

Oh, and about that final line? The question circulated on Facebook not long ago, and folks voted for their favorite all-time-best-last-novel-line. I vacillated between the last line in The Great Gatsby and the last line in James Joyce’s short story The Dead. But then my friend reminded me of the final line in The Shipping News and despite the presence of the “to be” verb I had to agree:

“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”